PPA

Hi,
I've a question regarding covering PPA, to cut a long story short next year i have been told that my PPA will be covered by a TA, the same TA will also be covering another teachers PPA. Now I work in an 'all through' academy Rec-Yr11, i'm in year 6 and the pressure is on to get results, there are only three of us in the year group 2xCT 1xTA. It is up to us to arrange our PPA time with the TA so that she can cover it. what do people think of this situation? and is it legal? To my mind it isn't going to work and somehow doesn't seem right. To make matters even more confusing i'm an AST and have an additional 20% off timetable, which i'm not sure how i'll cover.

Hi, I've a question regarding covering PPA, to cut a long story short next year i have been told that my PPA will be covered by a TA, the same TA will also be covering another teachers PPA. Now I work in an 'all through' academy Rec-Yr11, i'm in year 6 and the pressure is on to get results, there are only three of us in the year group 2xCT 1xTA. It is up to us to arrange our PPA time with the TA so that she can cover it. what do people think of this situation? and is it legal? To my mind it isn't going to work and somehow doesn't seem right. To make matters even more confusing i'm an AST and have an additional 20% off timetable, which i'm not sure how i'll cover.

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Never an ideal situation imo when TAs are being used for PPA though there are benefits - the TA knows your ways/methods etc....
Though the TA may struggle with adjusting from being TA to teacher - well the students may struggle in knowing/understanding their different roles....
Anyway - suppose if I were you I would take this as an opportunity - you basically can decide what is the best time for her to be covering the 40% teaching time for you and the other teacher - least you have some control....
I would plan when you deifnitely need to teach and their support - more than likely lit/num/sci.... the rest will go over to the TA. Likelihood is that the TA will cover you both in the afternoons I expect, unless you feel you can provide them wih stand alone areas of the core subjects to cover in a whole day?
Take it an opportunity to be creative and make it work...

There's probably a distinction to be made between old wave academies and the new wave happening now.
The older ones, I think, were mainly established as new schools with new staff (albeit in place of old ones, and with the old staff applying for the new posts), and were set up with their own terms and conditions. Hence they could cherry pick what they liked.
With the new wave, where the school is changing status and all staff are just continuing in employment, I think existing staff are protected from any non-negotiated change to their terms and conditions. New staff could be given a contract which doesn't use STPCD, and the school could open negotiations with the existing staff on changes, but I think there are plenty of schools in this wave which are (at least for the moment) saying that they'll stick with STPCD.